My Cousin is finally moving over to the PC master race. xD Lol looking to help him build a desktop. Budget is around 1000-1500 give or take, he wants something that will play the latest stuff well. I was just looking for any opinions out there from you guys.
I am actually having a hard time putting together a build that fits that budget because of needing to fit in a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and speakers, on top of high end hardware.
Ok here is what I came up with: Tower: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146075 Alternate tower if he prefers white: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146076 Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182331 That gives enough power for as much overclocking on both the CPU and GPU that you would ever want to do, or is enough to let you run two GPUs without overclocking. CD/DVD drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106393 Because he probably will want to use some CD installers. I tried to put a Bluray drive in but the budget started getting out of hand and I had to cut it Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128709 Good cheap motherboard with most of the latest connections for hardware in it. CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116945 Rbstr found this better CPU, use it instead of what I had linked to before. RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231468 Went to this because I couldnt afford to go with 16GB in the budget GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125696 One of the best GPUs you can get, it will keep you playing games for a long time. Get this GPU if you want to save about $200. It also isnt as fast, but it just depends on how much you want to spend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832 storage: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148949 Need a solid state drive of course. Went with this over and Intel because reports have been very good for Crucial lately. Never would have recommended them before but now they seem to be ok. This is a nice drive for how cheap it is. Peripherals: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823201069 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826193082 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AJ2RD4794 Cheap keyboard and mouse cause that is all he needs. That XBox One controller can be bought for $55 elsewhere, but just wanted to keep it Newegg links for ease. I put in the controller because since he is transferring from consoles to PC this will make the transition easier and the majority of games from the past couple years all support the controller. Subtotal is right about $1450
I'll have the ultimate challenge for Enigma, build an AMD computer and make it worthy for 1440p gaming (or 4k if the oculus is released before i die of old age).
I get where you're coming from Enigma but for a first timer to PC building I wouldn't want to give someone a build that requires overclocking to be cost-efficient in the CPU. The cooler is part of the CPU cost in that situation and it just doesn't stack up well. If you drop the cooler you've got a $140 cpu budget which squeeks gives you two options that are simply better to plug in and use: The i3-4330. Or an FX-83X0 (8320?). That would leave overlocking on the table if he wants to go out and get a cooler later. Otherwise I like it. Spend the bucks on the good video card because it matters so much more and 8gb of RAM remains plenty for the time being. Then, what's the guy actually want in terms of peripherals, Owainn? We could also spend way less on a monitor by not going with something big/1440p? I also cannot recommended a headset unless it's strictly necessary. Decent headphones and a cheapo mic of some kind blows them out of the water. It's not even a contest. These would stomp all over pretty much any gamer-oriented headset: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AJIF4E?tag=thewire06-20&linkCode=as2 Add a $5 clip-to-the-wire microphone and you have something that easily fits into any kind of audio setup DAC/AMP wise in the future or just plugs into the motherboard's built in right now.
I suppose the i3-4330 would be a better choice. I did not want to go with a dual core CPU since the trend for gaming APIs is finally moving towards easier multicore support and more and more games are showing good multithreading ability. However that i3 has hyperthreading which gives it 4 threads, same as the AMD I had in there, and the cores themselves are stronger so overall Id say in multithreading it will probably do about the same performance and still have better single threaded speed for older games as well. Nice pick Rbstr.
Dont worry about the monitor and the speakers, he has gaming headsets and a good monitor he uses with his xboxone
I have a couple suggestions. I was looking at making a PC of a similar price range and was able to make this on PC Part Picker CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K - $270 from Micro Center (Store pick up only) (For some reason PCPP listed it at $224 on NCIX US) Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC Mate - $90 From Newegg RAM: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2x8) DDR3-2400 - $120 from Newegg Or G.Skill Ripjaws X series 8 GB (2x4) DDR3-2400 - $55 from outletPC Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB SSD - $200 From Outlet PC GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 295x2 8GB - $620 from Amazon Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro - $99 from Newegg PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G1 1000W 80+ Gold Fully modular - $160 from newegg The Total for this would be $1495-1560 Slightly above his budget, but well worth it IMO. If the price is too much, you can get a cheaper case, get a smaller PSU (this set up uses 684W) if there wont be overclocking, and you can lower the ram to 8GBs by going with the 8 GB option mentioned above for $55. I'd get something like this if I had that budget. And personally, I prefer AMD over Nvidia due to its cheaper pricing for performance. The reason for recommending the R9 295x2 over other GPUs is simple, its 2 GPUs (R9 290Xs) in one, it comes with a stock water cooler, and its pretty cheap when compared to other GPUs on the market. But if the R9 295x2 is too much, you can get half of it by getting an R9 290X for $300 on Newegg (there's 2 versions of this card, one with DirectX 11.2 and this one with DirectX 12). Another cool thing about the 295x2 and the 290x is that you can crossfire both of them. Meaning you can crossfire a 295x2 with a 290x. which is pretty cool incase you feel like upgrading in the future when prices keep dropping. Good luck choosing.
I would not get that 295X2, it is a terrible card to go with for gaming. While it has tons of power, AMD has awful drivers for multi card setups. You will run into all kinds of problems with that card. Mixed crossfire of a 295x2 and 290x would just add even more mess to the situation and most games stop scaling after 2 GPUs still these days. AMD may have better price/performance for a lot of their GPUs, but with Nvidia you get much more smooth experience, easier configuration, more support for odd setups, better new game support, less glitches, less heat, and lower power draw. Seems worth it to stick with Nvidia for right now. The performance *might* be worth it when games change over to DirectX 12 since AMD already has asynchronous shader support built into their R9 cards, but that is a maybe and you still have to weigh that with the headaches of owning 295X2. Oh and, you need a different motherboard for that Devil's Canyon processor. And an aftermarket heatsink for the CPU. If you don't get those things it is completely pointless to buy a DC processor because Intel designed that specific CPU to overclock and markets it as such, it would be terribly wasteful running it at stock speeds.
What motherboard would you recommend then? As for the processor, he doesn't have to get into OC immediately, could wait a couple months and then get a CLC like a Corsair H100 for a $100. and I'd imagine OC isn't something easy for someone that's new to PCs. I personally still dont know how to do OC. otherwise i'd try to OC my current CPU. I cant really speak for Nvidia because i never had one of their cards, but I also have nothing bad to say about AMD cause it never gave me any issues. Anyway, im sort of new at this but trying to learn more before I try to build my 1st PC. I'm debating whether to make a PC like the one above with a 4790K or a 5930K with X99 I've looked a bit at the price ranges for what i want. A build with the 4790K comes at about $1800. And a build with the 5930K comes at around $2700 (with new monitor) or around $2500 without new monitor. but I'm looking to build the PC around next black friday for the deals and stuff so the prices would be much cheaper by then.
The problem with the 295X2 is that it is Crossfire in 1 card, you cannot disable the second GPU completely. This causes issues as AMD has bad crossfire drivers to begin with, but when used with new things it has even more issues. Like AMD's own Freesync monitor tech that competes with GSync. Right now you cannot run Crossfire when using a Freesync monitor, and that means you cannot even use the monitor at all when you have a 295X2 card in your system. It also presents challenges at times with multi monitor setups being 2 GPUs in 1, and has problems if you were to try and set up an eyefinity multi display. I really just dont think it is a good card to go with given the number of problems it has, especially for a first time PC builder. The 295X2 also consumes tons of power and produces a ton of heat, which I dont care much about the power part but the heat being dumped into your room can be really annoying. I know on summer days I really like that I have much more efficient GPUs now days. Look at the 390X when it comes out in a couple months. It will be around as good as the 295X2 is and uses a bit less power and is only a single card so it is much better to go with. Nvidia will also be releasing the 980Ti card shortly which is going to be around the same price as a 390X is but consumes a lot less power and has better multi-GPU support. That MSI board has no heatsink over the VRMs which can be bad because those get pretty hot when doing hardcore gaming and with overclocking. It also only has 4 phases which means you wont get much past the stock boost speed without risking possible hardware failure in time. MSI is also not known to have very good voltage regulator modules in the first place, their "military class 4" is bull shit marketing and it sucks in real life. Strapping a few tantalum capacitors on a motherboard and calling it military does not mean the motherboard is anywhere close to military specifications and reliability. The board also seems to only have a single PCI-E GPU slot, and the second slot seems to actually be a 4x slot, not good for graphics. You can read this in the listed specs (x16 or 4x4x) but also looking at the contact points in the slots themselves it looks like only wired for 4x. That means crippling GPU bandwidth. I was just looking at quite a few boards and most boards under $110 actually list and are wired for a 4x slot on the second PCI-E. So you dont want those. Generally you want to look for SLI support on a motherboard, if it does not list SLI then it will also be bad for Crossfire too. This is because Crossfire support 4x slots, but no one would ever want to actually use them like that. SLI only supports 8x slots minimum, so if a board does not have SLI support listed then it does not have dual 8x slots. SLI support = good Crossfire support. Id go with this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128723 It is still cheap but is way better built than that MSI crap and supports proper dual x8 GPU setup as well as has more CPU phases and VRM heatsinks. The "UD" series are Gigabytes best boards, of which the UD3 is the lowest end of the good ones. It goes up to the UD5, then UD7, and sometimes the UD9 as well. For a CPU heatsink, obviously the big CLCs and $80 air coolers are the best without going to full water cooling, but things like the CM Hyper 212 EVO and the Cyorig H5 (and soon to be released H5 Ultimate) are some very nice coolers for the money and will get you pretty far. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4UF1W87430 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835214023 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099 And since it is your first time building and overclocking, just use the included "EasyTune" app Gigabyte bundles with their motherboard and select what OC level you want. Easy. When you buy a monitor, just remember that a monitor is what you actually see and you are looking at it for a very long time. Usually people go 7-10 years on the same monitor, outlasting the computer itself. Getting a crap monitor means you are missing out an good image quality for all those years. You can have great hardware pushing a bunch of FPS, but if the image looks like crap then is it really worth it? But all this doesnt really matter much if you plan to build it around black friday/cyber monday anyway as we will have 2 new best GPUs out from each maker and Intel will already have Skylake processors and motherboards with the new socket and 100 series chipsets out.
To reiterate what enigma was saying. The nvidia card is just an all-around better experience these days. Way better drivers, way less heat, less noise and better performance. Personally I stay as far away from multi-card setups as I can. 1440p is perfectly doable with one of the high-end cards. SLi and crossfire only add hassle and "when the prices drop you can add another". But "when the prices drop..." is rarely a real gain. You end up with twice the heat and noise, a less stable system, and cards that are behind the curve on new technology. IMO the only time for multi-card is if you're going to build a system for really high resolutions and you do it from the start with two higher-end cards. Don't fall into the expensive CPU trap. The big-socket i7s simply aren't worth it for gaming. Even the "regular" i7s are dubious propositions. I wouldn't get anything fancier than a 4690K. (Certain non-game workloads might benefit so if you do a lot of something else with the computer, let us know)